Grids Are Good (Right?) potx

Grids Are Good
(Right?)
March 10, 2007
SXSW Interactive
Austin, TX
Khoi Vinh
Subtraction.com
Mark Boulton
MarkBoulton.co.uk
About Khoi
I’m the Design Director for The New York
Times Online.
I’m the author of Subtraction.com, a personal
weblog where I write about design, technology
and other subjects.
nytimes.com
subtraction.com
Subtraction.com
About Mark
I’m the Founder of a tiny design consultancy
Mark Boulton Design.
I also write about design and whatever else
takes my fancy at markboulton.co.uk
markboultondesign.com
markboulton.co.uk
MarkBoulton.co.uk
Dots to Design
From Dots to Design
•
Any two or more marks on a single plane is a

design.
Some History
The grid is the most vivid manifestation of the
will to order in graphic design.
A Brief History
of the Grid
Looking for Reason
Divining architectural proportion from nature.
Le Corbusier, “Modulor” 1948.Leonardo DaVinci, “The Vitruvian Man” 1492.
Right Up to the Modern Day
Ornamentation
From this…
Leopoldo Metlicovitz, “Fleurs de Mousse,” 1914.
Advertising poster for French perfume.
Rational Design
…to this.
Theo Ballmer, “Neues Bauen” 1928.
Poster for German Werkbund exhibition.
New Ideas
Rationalism became the
new imperative for design.
Out with decoration and
formalism, in with logic
and standardization.
Jan Tschichold, “Die neue Typographie” 1928.
Instructions for the standardized layout of A4 letterhead.
The More Things Change…

Modernists looked to build a new aesthetic by
•
Deriving beauty from the innate qualities of
the machine
•
Championing standardization
Sound familiar?
…The More They Stay the Same
There is a strong overlap between what
motivated grid usage nearly a century ago and
what motivates grid usage today.
•
Deriving beauty from the innate qualities of
the browser
•
Championing standardization
Paul Rand for IBM
Paul Rand, IBM Annual Report, 1975
J. Müller-Brockmann
Tonhalle-Quartett, 1955. Juni-Festwochen Zürich,
1959
Juni-Festwochen Zürich,
1962
Musica Viva, 1968
Massimo Vignelli for National Park Service
Unigrid as a solution to
large-scale design and
production of many
different publications.
Grids on the Web

Crate & Barrel
crateandbarrel.com